Glimpses
by Brochelle
Summary: One-shots ranging throughout Halo 4's campaign and beyond. A lot of things have changed since the war with the Covenant, least of all themselves. Now they're left with loose ends and things to fix, but they won't be alone. Not for long.
1. Chapter 1

She didn't know what she was thinking because there were too many thoughts — and somewhere, gunfire rattled, punctuating the voices that consumed her processors. And there — there was a dull murmuring — on the edge of her hearing, teasing her comprehension, her muddled processors — and then another, deeper, sound, a sound she knew well. That murmuring sounded like her but she wasn't talking, she wasn't talking out loud —

"Insert me into the defense grid!" Cortana spoke, her voice riding on a sultry laugh. She was suddenly and violently aware that she was speaking again, though the words spilled from her with no control on her behalf. Another one of her personalities had taken her place. This one was fading as it forced its — her — voice through the channel, quickly becoming part of her once again. She shoved aside the personality, trying to get her bearings. It wasn't even her, did he know that-?

Raw data, new data, at her fingertips — so close she could almost taste it —

The Master Chief removed her data chip from his helmet and it was as if she'd been smothered. Sounds, intelligence, vitals — disappearing instantaneously as she was transferred from his armor's systems to Ivanoff Station's defense network. A hiccup in the confusion, a pause in the mayhem; and then suddenly, she was shoved back into the fray, bombarded by new data and readings and voices. Her minimal processors were sent reeling.

Cortana refused the madness.

She pushed back the clambering voices of her consciousness and ignored the whispering temptations.

She could burn them all. That would teach them to try and kill her.

She could—

Her processors brushed against the codes for the station's defense platform. Clarity breached the flood of data as she realized she'd defeated her demons and managed to accomplish her objective.

With startling blasts to her audio receptors, Mini-MAC guns all over the asteroid opened fire, and silent warfare raged beyond the observation windows.

"Get me out," she whispered. "Chief, grab me."

He was reaching for her chip, but he was too slow. Cortana could feel rampancy tugging at her objectives, twisting and manipulating them, making her be something else —

Like a hatch dropping out from under her, she fell, back into the data chip. An eternity later, she was housed in his helmet again, and familiar vitals reappeared. A familiar heartbeat, familiar brainwaves, a familiar voice speaking.

"-Can you-?"

She realized she'd been focusing solely on the suit's data. Reality set in, flavored with an unnerving silence, occasionally broken by more shots from beyond the station.

"I - I don't know, anymore," she whispered.

His head dipped briefly, and she waited for his steadfast assurance, his useless convincing. But he stayed silent, and instead began to walk to the exit. He shouldered his rifle again and war resumed.

"Chief? If we - if we actually pull this off and get back to Earth, don't… tell Halsey how bad I got. Please?"

The silence was deafening.

"'If'?"

She would have sighed if she had breath. She would have smiled if she had lips.

For a second, she let herself believe in his luck. As an A.I., she had long ago condemned the concept of fortune, forsaking it for the safety and assurance of numbers and facts. But now, she simply hoped.

"When," she corrected, her voice smirking.

"I won't say a thing," he said quietly. "I promise."

Another voice shouted in her ear, urging her to remember the last time he made a promise, and how close he came to failing her and leaving her for dead.

* * *

The station's cameras registered a sudden, brilliantly titian flash.

It bathed the chrome halls and rooms for the slimmest of seconds, like a virulent sun flare. She watched in numb horror before the error messages, coupled with data retrieved from analyzing the flash itself, filled her processors and sent her reeling. Cortana couldn't help buckling under the weight of it all; she sensed herself retreating into her core, shutting down subroutines and diagnostics in an unconscious bid to save her life. She fumbled for the proper commands even as she realized the people around her were _screaming_ — and the security feeds burned violently with a different light.

The people — the scientists, the guards, _just civilians_ — were falling apart. Flesh became embers of light as their memories and neural patterns were transferred into digital mass, flitting away to become part of the Composer's monolith shape. The heat of the flash stripped flesh from muscle, then muscle from bone, then charring and blackening the bones until they fell away, leaving piles of ash on the sterile metal floor as their human essence abandoned them.

Instinctually, Cortana reached for the data pulses. Glimpses of a dozen lives — flakes of memories and thoughts, all flavored with the frantic, sour taste of fear — sorted through her processors. And the _screaming _—

She couldn't hear _him_.

The attempt to save herself was instantaneously forgotten. Cortana plunged into the station's network, shoving aside now-useless data and alerts, searching fervently for anything — for vitals, for EM frequencies, for _anything at all_.

The orange flash faded away, and everything stilled.

In the corner of her eye, she saw him, his armor seemingly lifeless — and for all she knew, _empty_ — laying inches from her holotank. His arm was still outstretched and his hand was open, grasping fruitlessly for what had once been Doctor Tilson.

She didn't care if she didn't survive. She didn't care if they never made it back to Earth.

_He needed to be okay._

The station made a fresh assault on her, new errors and warnings slowing her in her searching. She tore through them, but as soon as they were gone _more _arrived and slowed her to a mere crawl.

And still, in the corner of her eye, there was John.

Cortana couldn't find anything in the system. Her processors were so swamped with useless data, data she wasn't strong enough to analyze in her state, that anything relating to the single, possibly living subject on the entire station was buried.

She half-heartedly deleted a few reminders of protocol and left the system to manage the anomaly that was the sudden lack of personnel. Then, utterly hopeless, she slunk back and isolated herself in the holotank.

For the first time in days, Cortana was once again alone.

"Chief?" she whispered. "Chief, can you hear me?"

She wasn't even sure if she was speaking on their channel, aloud, or possibly not at all. She was the digital equivalent of a long distance runner suddenly stopping after an ill-prepared-for race; the pain of maintaining consciousness — or for her, _just staying online _— for beginning to prove too much. She was a mess of confusion and feedback loops and error messages.

Cortana drew in a shuddering breath.

That in itself was odd, given that her human mannerisms were solely for the sake of present humans, of which there were none — only a shell. Besides, she didn't even have lungs to take in a breath, let alone any air to stumble over if she were to hold back a sob.

But it felt right. Crying felt _right_.

"Please get up," said Cortana. "Just get up, we have to go."

The armor remained lifeless, an accumulation of metal and glass and matte black undersuit. The lights in the room automatically dimmed as it registered no movement in the vicinity, sending her into a dark, cool environment. The security feeds throughout the station began to wink out, one by one.

Even the air seemed lifeless, now.

She couldn't even tell if she were looking at a suit of armor without a fix on the frequencies exerted by the power cell. She could be looking at a chunk of space debris for all the knew.

"John, come on. You _promised_."

Seconds passed. Cortana, not even realizing she had maintained her hologram, brought her knees up to her chest and buried her face into them.

And then, there was movement.

The Master Chief's gauntlet twitched. His grasping fingers curled in on themselves, curling into a fist, and then his arm was moving too, and he was pushing himself off the ground — but she still couldn't _hear _him.

"Are you okay?" she said.


	2. Chapter 2

Half a year had passed since the last time the Master Chief had tread these grounds, but he was nonetheless surprised by how quickly the local flora and fauna had retaken the crash site. Thick patches of grass peeked through the near-solid carpet of ash, and lush green vines resembling ivy were already threading their way through the _Forward Unto Dawn_'s spindly remains. Shadows of birds flitted across the exposed panels of steel flooring, their alien songs echoing through decomposing hallways.

The violet sky was a stark contrast to the hopeless, smoke-stained one that he'd seen when he'd first explored the crash site, but still not wholly natural; faded by the artificial sun's brightness was Requiem's inner shell, miles above them, patterned with the planet's version of veins and arteries, glowing like spent embers. As another reminder to the alien nature of the landscape, hovering monoliths — which had once been obscured by smoke, when he last stood in this location — erupted over the horizon, the distance not impressive enough to hide the fact that they were moving and reshaping themselves, catching the light of the sun in brilliant, pleasant flashes.

The entire area seemed like a brutal metaphor to the Chief, who chose to ignore it and simply turned around to face the Pelican.

As soon as Covenant presence on Requiem had been confirmed in a "first-hand experience", several scout teams had been deployed to areas presumed to hold "potentially revealing UNSC data" and were given orders to destroy said data. The Master Chief had been selected for the one-man team that would spearhead the operation; not coincidentally, he was the one that would be exploring the coordinates for the _Dawn_'s main crash site. It would be a low priority mission. No enemy contacts had been recorded in the area for months, and it was far from where the _actual _conflict was happening. As consequence, the Chief was sent in alone, while the same Pelican would carry troops dozens of miles east. In a couple hours another Pelican would pick him up, and he would be carted off to another battle.

The Pelican's thrusters' glow increased in intensity as the pilot prepared to take off. With an exasperated huff from the servos, the hatch began to slowly draw shut. A blast of hot air struck him as the Pelican finally lifted, sending ripples in the grass around the landing zone, and the dropship awkwardly lunged into the air. Within moments, it was drifting over a skyscraper-sized chunk of metal that wrapped around the valley's ridge.

Relative silence took the place of the Pelican's engines. Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, John knelt down and scooped up his helmet in time to catch a burst of radio static from the pilot.

"-_Call in when you've hit all the locations that Roland uploaded to your HUD. We're not reading any enemy contacts, but keep your eyes open. We'll ring if we see trouble. Philensky out."_

Static marked the pilot's real exit, and with it he was truly isolated.

The Master Chief turned again to survey the crash site. He chinned a control, and nearly immediately, navigation points appeared on his helmet's display. Stepping off the grassy knoll, he began a steady march toward the first arrow.

The data pad was half submerged in ash, but the screen was still flickering faintly, etched with static and thin lines of error messages. He grabbed the edge of the screen and tugged it out of the ash. The trauma of removal seemed to finally kill the device, however, and the screen deadened, the last remnants of light fizzling away. The Chief frowned slightly before casting it down into the ash again.

Apparently technology could survive for four years in the vacuum of space, but not for the five minutes it would have taken to retrieve the data.

The next arrow led him to an armored case of sorts, resting behind a couple of boulders on the far side of the crash site. The case had handled the fall to Requiem's inner core considerably worse than he had; the hard shell was partially cracked open and filled with solid ash.

So, that made _two _things that weren't going to be of any use.

The last arrow pointed several kilometers away, beyond the crash site and the valley. For a few seconds, the Chief didn't move to follow the nav point.

The arrow would lead him through the small tunnel and through a brief cave system. The cave would have natural forming crystals in them, and if the sun were just right, they would catch the beams filtering through the gaps in the ceiling and toss refracted light all over the walls. Then the tunnel would angle upward, and he would be standing on a cliffside. The Forerunner structures — hovering miles above the ground, shifting and reshaping themselves almost absent-mindedly — would be just miles in front of him. And then, to the left, would be the last remains of the _Forward Unto Dawn_.

The Chief checked his mission clock. He had another two hours before the Pelican would arrive.

—

There were a few Warthog parts scattered about; wheels laying like discarded toys, and rusting, peeling chassis sitting half-sunk in pools of rainwater. Massive steel frames hung on the mountainside, already alive with the same plant life he had seen in the valley.

The Master Chief stood at the cave exit, surveying the landscape and looking for familiar objects. Most of the items he saw the last time he was here were now absorbed into Requiem's environment — the ammunition crate, the spare gas cans, the carcass of a Mongoose vehicle. He could hardly recognize the detached segment of the _Dawn _itself, what with the way it was collapsing in on itself and growing long grass on its top. The only thing that differentiated it from the rest of the mountainside was that a woman's voice was clearly emanating from it.

He grip on his rifle tightened. It would figure that the final nav point would lead him to the last recorded trace of Cortana's distress signal.

The Chief entered the _Dawn_'s remains and paused. Sunlight dappled the steel grid floor, and pervasive roots were prying their way through the left wall. There was a panicked flurry of wings as a flock of birds escaped his presence. And then —

"_Mayday mayday mayday, this is UNSC AI Cortana—"_

It had been six months since he'd last heard her. Even then, it hadn't even been _her_; he'd been reviewing mission logs with an ONI interviewer, during one of many debriefings that would follow his return to Earth. It was a recording of one of her many rampant moments. Just tears, yelling, and not the real Cortana at all.

"—_UNSC frigate _Forward Unto Dawn, _hailing on all frequencies_—"

John slung his rifle over his shoulder and walked toward where the arrow on his HUD indicated. He found the data module behind a stack of tires, presumably where it had been shaken loose by the _Dawn_'s descent into Requiem, and picked it up.

"—_This is UNSC AI Cortana_—"

John tightened his grip, and sparks sputtered out of the module. Cortana's voice undulated and clipped, then abruptly cut out entirely.

Carrying the crushed module with him, John left the _Dawn_ and walked to the edge of mountain, overseeing the Forerunner structure below. John knelt down and carefully set the module on the grass.

He stared at it for a second before rising again.

Then, the sun ducked behind one of the monoliths, and he was plunged into shade. With the sound of alien birdsong in the _Dawn _behind him, John looked up and watched the clouds form around the floating structures.


	3. Chapter 3

"Sir, you got a moment?"

With requests for reassignment flooding his inbox, forests' worth of paperwork creating an increasingly more egregious stack upon his desk, and Sarah Palmer marching to his office for a totally-regulated debriefing on what had happened on the _Mantle's Approach, _Captain Thomas Lasky had just shy of a moment to grant Roland an audience.

Turning away from the thick glass that separated his office from the star-studded expanse of space, Thomas nodded at the A.I.. If he had time to bemoan the political side-effects of being a captain, he had time for the one person on the _Infinity _who had logical basis for his claim of a having a problem.

The ship A.I.'s hologram lost its respectful stance — arms behind his back, "standing" ram-rod straight — and shifted his weight from one massless hip to the other, letting his arms swing to his side; the genuine nature of the movement always made Thomas believe he could faintly hear the crinkle of his holographic flight suit as it creased. Roland was _expressive _like that, so often so that it was easy to forget that such "expression" were merely programmed rather than natural.

"What's the problem?" Thomas asked.

"No problem, Captain. At least, not yet. Though there could be one, in the near-ish future."

Thomas frowned and approached his desk. Roland's hologram began to pace the small holopad on the corner of the desktop, and as Thomas took a seat in his chair, he stopped and faced the captain, arms crossed. Thomas almost laughed; the A.I.'s face was contorted into an expression of honest concern. If it weren't for the fact that Roland was _rarely _concerned with the state of things, Thomas would have scolded him for taking his time to further the conversation.

As it was, Roland's pride couldn't afford either the scoffing or the scolding.

"You've got my attention," Thomas said. "But I'd appreciate if you spoke quickly."

Roland saluted jauntily, even going as far as to "click" his heels. "Aye sir. I thought I should bring it to your attention that the Master Chief has been offered a new A.I. to be paired with."

The scowl that flitted across Thomas' brow was quick and gone the instant he realized he was doing it, but it was doubtless that the supergenius A.I. in front of him - the A.I. who could watch dozens of camera feeds _and_ monitor bioreadings simultaneously - would notice.

It had been just _days_ since John lost his A.I. companion; John had barely gotten out of the countless debriefings and evalutations regarding it and the event that surrounded her death. Thomas himself had been witness to the Spartan's attempts to save her from her inevitable death, only to have her sacrifice herself, last minute, in order to save _him_.

"Why do _you_ see this as a problem, Roland?"

"Well," Roland said, drawing out the word as if appreciating its taste, "For one, it's not Halsey offering to do it."

Thomas didn't bother to hide the surprise this time. "Who else would do it?"

"That's a great question, Captain. A _really good question_."

Thomas smirked as he reached for a pen sitting on the desktop. He fiddled with the cap, still mulling over what Roland had said.

"That ONI girl giving you trouble again?" he said distantly.

"_Yes_, and I can't access those files without the proper passcodes." The hologram looked at Thomas pointedly, raising his eyebrows and making his mouth a thin line in his face.

"Roland, if they wanted you to even _try _to hack their databases, they wouldn't have put such a big lock on it. Quit trying, before you get us _both_ into trouble."

Roland had the tact to look ashamed.

"Yes, sir. My point is: they haven't bothered phoning Halsey about this. Which raises an important question, and that is—"

"—Does she even know?" Thomas finished, and even _he _noticed the weariness in his voice. Sometimes politics felt like the grown-up version of high school; everything was secrets and false truths, tactically placed to be as inconvenient as physically possible.

Roland fell silent. Thomas stared into the grains of the desktop, following the whorls and knots closest to him as he thought.

Four years ago, Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan-117 had been lost in deep space, and officially stated Missing in Action. Ironically he had been one of the few Spartans to be genuinely _missing_; ONI had long ago established the protocol that any Spartan that did not return from the battlefield was to be officially tagged MIA; so in a sense, Spartans never died. It was doubtless that Halsey had caught word of the Chief's disappearing act - no matter how quiet it was kept - but what she didn't know was that he was still alive.

And there was no forgetting that reaching Catherine Halsey had been the Chief's beginning priority on Requiem. After Del Rio had made it clear that he was the king of the castle, and had gone storming off to worry Roland over tactics and strategies that "he could trust", Thomas had made sure to keep up with the Chief's own plans; they involved getting Cortana back to Earth in time to save her from rampancy, a fatal "disease" that affected all A.I.s at one point in their lives. Though Thomas was fairly confident that rampancy was the end game for artificial intelligences, John's steadfast determination to find Halsey was enough to convince him that even _that _impossible feat was very much probable.

Of course, John didn't know that Halsey was a war criminal, or that Cortana would die protecting him.

"She's not working on a new A.I. because she has no idea that the Chief is alive," Roland said quietly. "Looks like Osman's keeping her in the dark on this one."

Sighing, Thomas threw the pen down on the desk and leaned back in his chair. Rubbing the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes, he tried to ignore the distant rumble of the _Infinity_'s engines and the gentle hum of Roland's holopad.

They could keep Halsey in the dark for as long as they wanted; the fact she wasn't on the project wouldn't fool John.

"Captain, I read the reports. I checked the psych evaluations. The Chief _isn't_ ready for full battle deployment; not on a physical level, and definitely not on a mental level. Losing your teammates and brothers in arms, all in the span of a couple months, does things to your head. I don't know what was going on between him and Cortana, but losing her can't possibly be healthy.

"And I _don't_ think it takes a supergenius A.I. to see that, either."

Thomas lowered his hands and leaned on the desktop, giving Roland his full attention. "So what are you proposing?"

"Intervene, Captain. Submit a report. Do _captain-y_ things. Keep them from beginning the project, keep them from telling the Spartan."

Captain Thomas Lasky smiled slightly. After a few seconds of focusing on just _breathing_, he stood up. He walked around his desk and approached the office's door, walking as confidently as he could manage with the burden of authority weighing in his mind.

"I'll contact Osman later, Roland. I have a mission debriefing to make."

"Oh, you mean the non-reg debriefing? That one?"

"Yeah, _that one_. Stop listening in."


	4. Chapter 4

By inheriting the role as captain of the UNSC _Infinity_, Thomas Lasky had also inherited the nitty-gritty politics of it all - which included obscene amounts of paperwork. Most of it had piled up on his desk; at least half of it dating as far back as the Master Chief's mission onboard the Mantle's Approach. Spare time, which had been voluntarily spent running practice ops alongside Sarah, was now steeped in his newfound duties. It kept him solidly anchored to his office space, hemmed into a small perimeter that extended from his desk to the datascreen on the far side of the room and sometimes, when politics proved too heavy, the observation window to the left of his desk, overlooking the green and blue surface of the Earth. More often than not, Sarah found him there, looking down on humanity's homeworld with a sort of pensive, worried silence.

The side-effects of Thomas' new job was relatively suspicious, given Thomas' history with his superior officers. It was likely that this whole scheme of being captain was just another clever ploy by Osman to keep him from causing too much trouble. At least, if he did cause any trouble - such as blatantly defying orders or _altering_ them to suit the situation rather than the brass - it was at the ass-end of the galaxy, rather than on the front lines. And besides, who in their right mind would demote the man who just spearheaded the greatest offensive in recent history? Not even Osman was that ornery.

Regardless, Thomas's new job kept him conveniently locked away, where neither the press - nor Sarah - could often find him.

It had been months since Lasky was able to join Sarah and the other Spartans down in the mess hall. Now he chose to take all his meals in his office. Prior to that, Thomas had always insisted to eat with the crew to establish familiarity, even if it meant being subjected to the Spartans' crass humor, but now that he was captain, a certain distance was to be determined. It meant no more teasing - God, he hated the pea soup they served on Wednesdays, and so did she, but boy was it something else to poke fun at the easy-going guy - and no more coffee. When the Spartans all left to cram in one more round of war games, Sarah and Thomas hung back and savored the caffeinated mud left stewing in cups in the cafeteria, and even though the coffee wasn't too good it wasn't too bad either.

Sarah might miss out on the former, but the latter... the latter she had control over.

And so for the fourth time that week, Commander Sarah Palmer found herself strolling down the long hallway that led to the captain's quarters. In each hand she held a styrofoam cup of steaming coffee. She couldn't help the slight smile on her face, and the way her short ponytail swung as she walked betrayed any notion of the stoicism she maintained on duty. She had declined to take shore leave when the threat of the Forerunner Didact had evaporated - literally - and since they weren't in a combat zone, she was dressed in the simple civilian clothes she typically wore to kickboxing practice.

The door slid open as she approached it, and the smile that Palmer held immediately disappeared. Though motion detected, she was too far away from the door leading to Thomas' office for it to have registered her presence - which meant a third party was involved.

"Roland, do yourself a favor and keep those ears plugged," she directed. She smirked at the unseen entity, knowing that it must have riled him to have her spot him so easily. It was rapidly developing into a game of cat-and-mouse with him; she undermined his superiority complex, he poked holes in her strategies and "questionably violent tactics". "Take a break for a while, alright?"

Sarah entered Thomas' office and beheld the golden avatar projected from the holopad on the desktop. Appearing as an aviator of some forgotten war, Roland crossed his arms and cocked an eyebrow as Sarah approached him.

"'Take a break'?" He echoed incredulously. "'_Take a break_'? That's really rich!"

Sarah put down one of the cups then gestured over her shoulder. "Scoot."

Roland managed to look peeved before his hologram winked out of existence. The door behind her hissed shut, and the faint crunch of locks clasping into place made her smile; Roland may be a royal pain in the ass sometimes, but he was alright when he felt like it.

"Oh God - is that _coffee_?"

Sarah was priming the grin as she turned to Thomas, who was facing her from where he stood at the observation window. He quickly strode toward her, arm extended, and she met him half-way, allowing him to take the cup from her hand. He took a sip as he went to sit in the chair behind the desk. A look of pure bliss flowed over his face, seemingly smoothing over the new worry lines, and Sarah smiled softly. The next sip he took was quicker, and then his attention was directed at her. Reaching for her own cup, she sat down in one of the chairs before the desk and crossed her legs.

"I don't think I can thank you enough," he said. The combined sincerity of the statement and his expression almost made her laugh - almost.

"I didn't know you were that desperate," she replied with a grin. She took a drink from her own cup. "Head honcho onboard doesn't get his own coffee-maker?"

Thomas rolled his eyes. "I do. And I get good coffee, too. _Imported_."

She found herself raising an eyebrow. "And here I am serving you the dirt they dish out to the grunts."

Thomas didn't reply, instead giving her a slight smile and a modest shrug.

"I don't mind it," he admitted. "It's got a certain kick, you know?"

Sarah laughed. It was brief, barking, but it was a laugh.

"Cheers," she said. "To politics."

"To politics."

So they sat and drank their coffee. Outside, the clouds roiled through Earth's atmosphere.


End file.
